AND SO IT BEGINS

 By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

 Remember newspaper reports in Indian media of large-scale cheating with jaw-dropping images of parents climbing through windows to help their offspring cheat?

Or the movie Why Cheat India? The Emran Hashmi starrer about malpractices in the education system?

Or 3 Idiots in which someone pays a bright and underprivileged boy to impersonate him during a four-year course?

In some of the countries we come from, cheating in exams is almost an industry. But it happens here, too.

I remember talking to Grant’s Desi Achiever Dr Hargurpreet Saini back in 2011 about the perfect scores some high school students were presenting to universities. While 100 per cent in the STEM subjects was achievable, how were they coming up with 100 per cent in history or English? Subjects where style mattered along with substance? Where the marking could be subjective?

Currently President and Vice-Chancellor, Dalhousie University, he was Vice-President, University of Toronto at the time.

It was a well-recognized fact, he said, that grade inflation goes on at schools. So now this was schools upping the grades of their students to improve their own ranking.

“We raise the bar, within a year or so, they raise the marks! It makes it harder to differentiate between the genuinely good grades and others, but we are getting better at evaluating. We ask students to write statements. There are interviews to get into elite programs.

“The truth is, this practice doesn’t help anyone. We not only risk the quality of our education system, but students who don’t really deserve the 100 per cent can’t maintain it at university and tend to fall on their face. The system corrects itself.”

As it did in the instance of the recent Law Society exams in which approximately 1100 candidates were affected.

“Licensing examinations cancelled to protect public interest and integrity of examination process.”

An email with this opening line showed up in my inbox.

To protect the public and the integrity of its licensing process, the Law Society has undertaken the decision to cancel the upcoming barrister and solicitor examinations, scheduled to be written from March 8 to 11, and March 22 to 25, respectively. This decision has been made as a result of information the Law Society has received which strongly indicates that examination content has been improperly accessed by some candidates, compromising the integrity of the upcoming examination period. Evidence indicates the potential involvement of third parties in this activity.

I was dismayed to read the news, but sadly, not shocked.

The words of an old song came unbidden: Yeh toh hona hi tha!

This was bound to happen.

This is not anything new. And something many of us are familiar with.

I recall the drama that played out during my grade 12 exams many, many years ago.

It was a tight schedule, one exam after the other, day after day. We’d return form one exam only to swot for the next.

It was also a very demoralizing period for my friends and myself as we observed several students bragging about having the questions in advance.

I’d come home and ask what was the point of studying or answering all the questions to the best of my ability if others were just going to waltz through the process.

In India, we had what were known as countrywide “board exams” and answer sheets were marked by educators in some other part of the country – not by those who knew the performance patterns of their students.

My answer sheets were going to be judged on par with those of someone who had prepared for just the select few questions they knew would be on the exam.

The evening before my Physics exam, my mother came into my room to ask me to go for a walk with her.

“Your father and I have been talking about how you are feeling about these exams,” she said. “We are questioning if we were wrong to instill the values we did in you and your brother.”

I had been very vocal at home about how I hated the system and how it was all so unfair. But hearing those words emerge from my mother’s mouth was unbelievably scary. If my parents stopped believing in what they said, what they inculcated by example, our personal universe was on shaky ground.

Thankfully, that’s not where she was headed.

“But we think that if you get a lower mark than that of someone who cheated, you’ll be disappointed, but you’ll vow to do better next time. However, if you got higher marks than you deserve through some nefarious means, would you not know you had cheated? Would you not wonder what your effort was really worth?”

On our return home she made me a cup of tea with an extra spoon of sugar and poured oil into my hair, massaging it in gently while I went back to studying (and grumbling).

The next morning, my father woke me up holding a copy of the day’s newspaper.

An investigative reporter had sourced the day’s Physics exam paper (the very exam I had been preparing for) by pretending to be a student and they had published it on the front page. The exam scandal blew up. Exams were cancelled. They were rescheduled. We celebrated for a while until we realized that nothing had changed, really. Those “leaking” papers and those buying them had just become smarter.

“We appreciate that this decision is upsetting news to those candidates not involved in improper conduct,” said Law Society CEO Diana Miles. “However, this is a critical and necessary step to protect the integrity of the licensing process and the reputation of those candidates not involved. Most importantly, as the regulator of the legal professions it is incumbent upon us to take immediate action to protect the public interest.”

Examinations were rescheduled with additional measures implemented to further strengthen the delivery of licensing examinations.

In Dark Age Ahead, Jane Jacobs wrote about “credentialling”, when a degree is just a means to a job, not to more knowledge.

It’s hard to say at this juncture how many were involved in leaking the papers or accessing the leaked papers. But wouldn’t their efforts have been put to better use if they had just studied for the exams and owned the result? Then they would have celebrated their success or hunkered down for another attempt, not be left with this hanging over them.

A degree obtained like this does no one any credit.